If you have a moment, I’d love for you to share what your first few weeks with your newborn felt like. What do you remember about it? What do you remember about how you felt, what do you remember how your couple felt? What were your biggest joys, your biggest worries, your biggest fears, your best moments, or the worst ones?

If you can take a moment, comment below with your memories, I’d love you to be able to share a bit of your story with us.

In the meantime, I have done a bit of research asking a few different parents on generally how they felt about their first few weeks with their newborn and this is what they had to say…

“I wanted to shut out the world and just be left to it” - this isn’t uncommon. As a new parent, you are expected to want to share your news with the whole world and show off your little bean, but actually, after a potentially long and difficult birth, you may just want to retreat and be left to it for a while.

“We gave up on trying to find a routine or stick to the one we had with our older children” - everyone handles anything in life differently. Some people find sticking to strict routines easier and others feel that it’s best to let go for a while. There is no right and wrong here. It’s whatever helps you get through this new upheaval.

“Everybody becomes an expert ” - It is so interesting how “advice” can become almost a source of comfort for some and totally overwhelming for others. I remember talking to Fiona about her first 12 months as a mum and what she found difficult in her first year. Ignoring social media and endless parenting forums and relying on her instincts is definitely what got her through the first few weeks with her newborn son.

“Accepting too much help actually became unhelpful!” - especially as a brand new parent, sometimes, when you know your closest friends and relatives have been looking forward to your baby’s arrival so much, it’s really difficult to then turn them away… but I guess sometimes we need to remind ourselves that it is we that matters and that the word “should” should (ha ha) really not exist in our vocabulary when it comes to figuring out our own boundaries.

“I realised that I no longer cared about going out and partying all night, nursing my son whilst watching Strictly became much more appealing” - again here, the views on how motherhood or fatherhood instantly changes your life vary greatly, and again, there is no right and wrong. But this comment came from a young woman working in PR and who revelled in the London party scene throughout her 20s. Whilst pregnant she had had fears that she was saying goodbye to a life she had loved for so long… but actually, when it came to it… every priority changed. Sure being out with her friends is something that now more than ever she really values but being at home with her little man tops it all.

What I will also do is leave you with a few photographs from a recent newborn photoshoot that tries to emulate what it actually feels like to have a newborn - I was only with baby E for a couple of hours due to the restrictions so this only a small taster. As you know, I don’t specialise in capturing perfect images of perfect family life. I really believe that life doesn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful. I was hired by this particular family to document the passing of time over a year. They are interested in collecting memories that reflect their actual lives so that they can go back to these images in years to come.

So here is baby E… he arrived bang in the middle of a pandemic, at home, with his big sister present. I was able to come and do a newborn photography session for him and his little family within the first few weeks before he changed too much (all Covid safe I assure you). I look forward to touching base with them in a few months’ time and see how he has grown.

If you’d like your first few weeks with your newborn documented and are ready to make an investment in the collection of real memories, why not take a look at my newborn portfolio and get in touch. I am a little more expensive that the average newborn photographer, but my services are incredibly bespoke and you end up with highly personalised images, not ones that look the same as everybody else.